Record labels (and the like) suing ISPs like this is such a weird fucking take. Like, imagine book publishers sending their agents to markets, libraries, book shops, etc. and noting down every single book sold and who bought them, then suing the local council/government/roading organisation if they discovered off brand books or even second hand books for allowing book pirates to drive those books along the roads.

Or how about suing the power companies for providing power to pirates, or computer hardware manufacturers, or farmers for growing the food that pirates eat…

I’m an ex web dev but I still maintain a few non-profit websites. It adds a much t my time load to make sure, what I sometimes a quite complicated system, mobile enabled. And even then it’s often more difficult to use a website with a lot of information or a necessarily complex store/booking system on a mobile phone or laptop. A larger screen with more screen real estate can make UX much nicer. But people have this perception that convenience or ease of access translates into easier to use. Hell even just using a keyboard n a desktop compared to a phone keyboard.

Heh, that box and version of Redhat was the first I tried Linux, as well as the same year - 1999 Cost me $110 brand new from a local stationary shop. Which was a lot for a poor student! Sadly didn’t last long as I just couldn’t get everything done in Linux as I could in Windows. And this was despite studying computing at the time.

Oh well 15 years later I tried again (Mint then Arch) and haven’t gone back to Windows since. 🎉

Organized crime has negative consequences for consumers and society as a whole

Organised crime like Google, Meta, Microsoft, the entertainment and music industries, Microsoft, most politicians… right?

I’m a long time Arch user (10 years) and I love EndeavourOS + Pamac (from Manjaro) as a simple install that I can easily maintain on family members computers or on our Laptop if I’m feeling lazy.

I think some amount of it is apathy, or modern-life time-poor induced apathy where people just want something to work and work quickly without much effort or time and so they just pony up. And with so many people not keeping a budget, $10 a month here and there or $30 once a month doesn’t seem like much if you’re not adding up all those subs combined over a month or a year or 5 years. Really, some subs could fall into the category of a dark pattern because $10 a month doesn’t seem like much compared to say $100 up front even though over the course of a year (or 2, 3, 5+ years) that sub costs you more than just buying software up front. (Think also Sam Vines Boot Theory).

I see some people are getting fed up (I’m one of them) but sadly plenty more who mindlessly keep paying more and more.

I dunno, I was pretty stoked installing Arch almost a decade ago after my spouse surprised me with a brand new PC he built for my birthday. Was also stoked installing Arch, in more recent years, on the PC I built.

And I’ve been at my most miserable in life while being a Windows user 🫠

Good luck getting anywhere in this country’s judicial system. The Courts here have repeatedly shown they kiss government arse and the NZ government has shown they kiss corporate arse.

New Zealand is no longer the land of no. 8 wire and protesting to stand up for rights, the environment, etc. but I fast becoming another western country beholden to apathy and consumerism. 😔

Its been a while since I used a Kindle but AFAIK its still this - using Calibre + the deDRM plugin. I don’t know if linking directly to stuff here is OK so just do an internet search for github noDRM deDRM_tools and you should find the plugin you need for Calibre.

For reference, this was the article I first read about this on: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/bank-problems-reports-bnz-asb-kiwibank-anz-visa-paywave-services-down/R2EY42QKQBALXNF33G5PA6U3TQ/

WTF does someone’s spiritual beliefs and practices have to do with how well they are able to run an organisation? That’s an ad hominem argument. My country has a Christian prime minister at the moment but oh noes, I’m a non-religious hippy ‘witch’ so I guess our prime minister should step down because he believes in a pseudoscientific giant bearded man that lives in the sky and goes to an expensive building every week to speak magic words in unison with other cult members to call a special spirit to bless everyone that believe the exact same doctrines…

Pantheon desktop (Elementary OS)

I think you have to manually enable it (may depend on your distro/DE) but SDDM works fine with Wayland as it stands now.

Yes, absolutely. I used to pirate almost everything because I was too poor to afford most things. Nowadays I can afford more (albeit still poor so some piracy is still out of necessity for monetary reasons). Sometimes I pirate as a try before I buy. Watching/reading reviews just doesn’t always cut it and the only way to know if something is useful/enjoyable if trying it out first. And some things I intentionally pirate even if I can afford because I have an ethical and moral objection to giving money to the company/creator (like Amazon, Disney, Adobe, etc.). And in those instances I also try to pay it forward as much as possible by direct supporting creators, donating to FOSS, charities, FSF, Internet Archive, etc.

Or Fit Girl

Reminds me of my Windows XP days when I used to customise the hell out of everything I could… custom boot screen… and yes custom BSOD. Which I switched to red 🟥❗ One day my PC RSODs in front of a family member and he said, “Oh shit, that must be really bad if it’s red instead of blue!” 😂